My 9/11 Memories.

On this day, 5 years ago, nineteen men hijacked 4 planes and crashed them into The Pentagon, both towers of the World Trade Center towers and a Pennsylvania field. Nearly 3,000 people died in a few hours. All of the death were horrific. Some of them we watched on Live TV.

Today is a day for remembering that day. This is what I remember.

At the time, I lived up in Rogers Park with two buddies of mine, Pete and Corey. My girlfriend, Corina, had moved out a couple of months earlier. Pete and I had our own bedrooms. Corey had hung up sheets to steal the sunroom and make it his bedroom.

I remember that it was a hot day. Our apartment had no air conditioning. But we had plenty of windows and the sun was streaming in.

The phone rang. Early. I was sleeping hard, exhausted from a hard work night at the theater, the night before. I can't remember what show I was working on, those days. I think it was "Big, The Musical." Whatever it was, it kept me out pretty late.

It was my mom on the phone. "Wake up," she said," We're under attack. They are bombing American cities. Don't go downtown today."

"Are you serious?" I said.

"As serious as a heart attack," she said, "Turn on the TV's. You'll see."

I assured her that I was plenty far away from downtown, in case something happened. I promised to call her later, when things cooled down. I stumbled out of bed and threw on pants and a t-shirt and went into the living room. I turned on the TV to see one of the twin towers smoking. As the Onion later said, I had awoken to find myself "living in a Bruckheimer film."

Corey heard the TV on and woke up. He came into the room to watch it with me. I downloaded into him, as much information as I knew at the time. Crashed plane into the tower (there was no footage of it, yet) and planes crashed in Washington DC and other places. No idea how many planes. For the time being, Chicago appeared to be safe. But all planes, everywhere, were being grounded. Every channel had live footage of the World Trade Center aflame and belching thick, black smoke out of it's side.

I went and woke Pete up. This was something that he would want to know about. He sat on the couch in his underwear, petting his cat, Figment, and watching the same horror show that we watched. We were all there watching when the second plane hit the second tower. Someone said, "Oh My God. They got us again." But I can't remember who said it.

We watched the first tower fall. We were dumbstruck.

Later, we watched the second tower fall. The dust and debris cloud coming up from Manhattan was a terrible, living thing.

We didn't leave the couch for another 5 or 6 hours. We switched between news programs. I went online and searched for more information there. I shouted out to the boys when I learned something new. "A plane crashed somewhere in Pennsylvania. I think the Air Force shot them down!"

I remember seeing a notice online that Howard Stern was broadcasting live and I listened to some of that, via headphones. It was there that I heard a guy call in from Pennsylvania to confirm that the Air Force had shot down a passenger jet and that the fighter planes were swarming the area. I believe, to this day, that our government shot down that plane. I don't hold it against them. It was a grim, final solution to a terrible situation. And probably saved hundreds of lives, even as it lost some.

The sun set and I can't remember if I ever ate on that day. I don't think so. I just sat there, watching, taking it all in. Horrified. And sad. It occurred to me that my world, as I knew it, was about to change in some very bad ways. We'd been attacked on American soil. Unprecedented. I never thought I'd see that, in my lifetime.

Eventually, Corey demanded that he and I were going out shopping for something. He needed to get out of the house and go somewhere, anywhere. He'd decided that we needed to go to Best Buy.

The streets were pretty empty as we drove there in his van. The whole way there, we discussed theories. I think that it was helpful for Corey to hear me talk about it and put things into perspective. At the time, we were certain that a nuclear war was the next most logical outcome. We were scared.

The Best Buy was as full as you would've expected it to be. People avoided the TV section, like it was gas-bombed. We'd all watched TOO MUCH TV that day and we wanted distraction. Corey bought a vacuum cleaner. I bought "The Goonies" on DVD. (I'd just gotten my first DVD player. I was pretty excited to get a new DVD. I remember thinking at the time, "Nothing heavy. This is a light, fun movie and it'll serve as a pleasant distraction from all of this.")

We went home and got some burgers from the mom and pop joint around the corner. We ate burgers and fries and watched "The Goonies" on DVD. It felt like a chore. All we REALLY wanted to do, was watch some more news. But we refused, putting some much-needed distance between us and the events unfolding in New York.

Corey and I walked, in the night time, down to the nearby docks of Lake Michigan. Out on the water, our legs dangling off the pier, he smoked. I sat there, looking up at the night sky. We talked about things and cried a bit. And we watched as the pairs of Air Force jets were the only planes in the sky. They were so high, that we couldn't hear their engines. Twin silent running lights in an otherwise empty sky. They patrolled the air above us, in endless patterns, protecting us, should the terrorists strike us again.

For the next few days, I remember noticing the oppresive silence of a grounded national air fleet. So many planes land at O'Hare and Midway, that normally the sky is full of an endless line of visibly landing planes. On that night, though, the sky was empty and silent. So was most of the city. We were all at home, watching tvs and trying to figure out what had happened and why.

"Why did I buy a vacuum cleaner?" Corey said, "We have hardwood floors."

I think that was the first time that I laughed, all day long.

Some time later, I slept.

It was a terrible day.

And it DID change our world and not for the better.

Without that day and those events, do you think that Bush would've been able to generate some much inertia to invade Iraq? A mistake that we're now 3 thousand lives into.
Civil liberties are threatened.
People are detained, God Knows Where for God Knows How Long.
And we've revealed ourselves to the world, to be PRECISELY the sort of people that the terrorists claimed that we were.
My bags are searched.
I leave my Gerber multitool home, when I travel.
My family can't come see me to the gate. (Something that I miss.)
And I am awakened to world where I now know and care deeply about who presides over this country and how they represent me to the rest of the world. Because I DON'T want another day, like that one, again. I don't think that killing everyone who opposes our national agenda is the best way to interract with the rest of the world. I think that understanding and actively involving the disenfranchised peoples of the world, is the only way to involve them enough to call extremist viewpoints into question. You're less likely to fire a Stinger missile at a valued friend.

More diplomacy. Less Destruction.

It's a bleaker world that we live in, now. Action films have to try harder to impress or amuse us. There's an edge to the world, now. This country has had her ass kicked by nineteen, highly-motivated guys with an agenda for destruction. If so few can cause so much harm, how do we defend ourselves against that?!?

Those were my memories of 9/11.

Mr.B



This video recently popped up on YouTube. Filmed in realtime, from a few blocks away from Ground Zero, this video takes you right into what that morning must've felt like. Be forewarned, it's very intense.